


Asitia

by pickalily



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:59:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickalily/pseuds/pickalily
Summary: After Sasha's death, Connie can't fathom the idea of eating. He bites into the overcooked chicken that the military excuses for food, expecting it to be as bland and dry as it always is, only to find that he tastes nothing at all.
Relationships: Sasha Blouse/Connie Springer
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Asitia

The sense of hunger goes first. The first night Connie eats, but he hardly pays attention to the food that enters his mouth. Military food has never been appetizing, but tonight it’s especially tasteless. There’s nothing different about it from previous meals - lumpy potatoes with gravy, chicken that’s too dry to swallow without a glass of water nearby, and carrots that have been steamed so long they’ve turned into mush - but Connie can barely stomach any of it. It’s selfish to think that he’s the only one that’s feeling this way. Everyone at his table - Mikasa, Armin, Jean - is mindlessly shoveling food into their mouths if only because they need to keep their strength up. Their portion sizes are a little bigger tonight. It’s in part to celebrate their return home from Liberio, but it’s also because there are fewer soldiers today than there were yesterday. As Connie picks at his food, he lifts his eyes to look up at the empty space at the table where his friend should be sitting. His stomach has been empty for hours, begging him to fill it with whatever food he can, but Connie can’t stand the thought of eating anything now that Sasha isn’t there beside him. 

Connie nibbles at a little piece of chicken, wondering why it tastes the same as the potatoes, the gravy, and the vegetables. The textures are different, but in the end, it all tastes like a strange gray paste. Connie can’t even call it food. If Sasha were here, would she say the same thing? But if she were here, the food would taste different, Connie thinks. 

“Hey.” A hand touches Connie on the back and rubs light circles between his shoulder blades. When Connie looks over, he sees Jean with his half-eaten tray of food. How did he manage to eat that much? “I know it’s hard … but you need to eat, Connie.” 

Connie nods numbly, aware of the concerned eyes that watch him. “I know,” he says, but his fork still sits idly in his hand. Nothing about the food in front of him looks edible. The colors are too dull and the shine of the chicken skin - Sasha’s favorite part of the bird, Connie remembers - is strange and rubbery. It doesn’t even smell like food, Connie thinks. Food that doesn’t taste, doesn’t smell, doesn’t look like food doesn’t deserve to be called food. 

There’s another hand, this time on Connie’s shoulder. “Don’t force yourself,” Mikasa says, her voice gentle. “Just eat as much as you can.” 

He swallows as he looks at the tray in front of him, its contents almost entirely untouched. “I know,” he manages to say, but he knows he won’t eat another bite. 

The rest of the night Connie spends pushing his food around with his fork, hoping that he’ll grow hungry by some miracle and wolf the entire meal down. That miracle never comes and he’s left listening to the sound of his remaining friends chewing their food in silence, all trying to get through this meal the best that they can. He thinks of discarding his food, but throwing it away feels like a waste so he ends up offering it to a group of soldiers that are celebrating Paradis’ victory because they’re too young to realize what they’ve lost in the process. He feels relieved when the food is out of his sight, believing that he won’t have to think about eating just as long as the food isn’t sitting in front of him any longer. 

That night his stomach feels like a cavity in his torso, ravenous and needing to be filled. Connie lies awake in bed, listening to the growling in his stomach. He feels the gnawing in his belly, his stomach desperate for any form of sustenance, but Connie feels no need to satisfy it. He goes to sleep completely empty. 

The rest of his senses follow in the days after. After the first night, the world loses its color. Connie sees the world in muted colors - the world is no longer bright and vibrant and beautiful. It’s painted in sepia tones as if someone had taken a photograph and let it age in the sun. Connie thinks that maybe it’s the lighting in the airship that somehow made him see the world in monochrome, but he walks up to the window and looks out into the ocean. The first time he had seen it, it was a glittering sapphire blue. Today it’s black like velvet. For a brief moment Connie wonders if it’s the weather, but he looks up at the sepia sky and there’s hardly a cloud. There’s just the sun, the only white in this landscape of dull tones, and Connie thinks it’s strange that it doesn’t hurt when he stares straight into it. 

He should probably tell someone about it, he thinks, but what’s the point? Connie finds that the world isn’t so bad in black and white. It’s probably better this way. There’s no point in seeing the world in color, not when Sasha isn’t here. 

Connie goes to bed early that day even though he had only been awake for an hour. He tells Jean not to worry about him. He’s just tired after yesterday. After all, who wouldn’t be after everything they’ve just been through? He just needs to recover, Connie assures his friends whenever they come to check up on him. He doesn’t tell them that he can’t eat even as his stomach is eating away at him and he fails to mention that he can no longer differentiate between colors because the world has turned into a black and white painting. He doesn’t tell them that he can’t stop thinking about Sasha. He’s sure they already know already anyway. 

The next few days, Connie loses his sense of feeling. He doesn’t notice when his friends touch him, only aware of them when he’s seemingly dragged out of bed by some invisible force. He’s lifted up gently, then shaken hard when he doesn’t respond. Connie’s eyes flutter open and he sees Mikasa shaking him, shouting something. He wonders why her voice is muted, barely audible as if she’s speaking underwater. It might be a product of just waking up, he thinks, but his hearing is the same after he’s sat up and up. Everyone’s voice is like that, Connie realizes, as he watches his friends surround him, their mouths flapping open and shut silently like fish. He looks at them numbly, not registering any of their words. He only understands what they’re saying when they pull him out of bed, pointing at the window and showing him that they’ve finally landed. 

He follows them out of the airship, not bothering to change out of the soldier’s uniform that he’s been wearing for days. As soon as they step out, his friends raise their hands to block the blinding sun from their eyes, but Connie hardly notices it. Beyond them stand the people of Paradis, cheering for them loudly as the soldiers descend from the airship, but all Connie hears is muffled applause. His friends around him put on fake smiles as they welcome the applause, but all Connie can think of are the caskets that are being carried out behind him. He thinks of one casket in particular, the one that holds the friend that should be standing beside him. He hangs his head and walks wordlessly past the crowd. 

The following days are shrouded in black - black skies, black thoughts, black dreams. He goes to Sasha’s funeral a few days after the ship lands. It’s jarring to see everyone dressed in black and surrounded by all of Sasha’s favorite wildflowers. If she were here, she would probably laugh at them, asking them why their faces are so glum when there are so many beautiful things surrounding them, and she’d convince Connie to run away with her so they could steal a plate of appetizers and eat it under the table. But the only reason that they’re gathered together like this is that Sasha’s not here and there’s no escaping that fact now that he’s seen her lifeless body in its casket. 

Everybody is crying as Sasha’s casket is lowered into the ground. Everyone except Connie, that is. He doesn’t think he can shed a single tear because the person in the coffin isn’t Sasha. Sasha was never that lifeless. He had seen her leave himself - too soon to stop the gun but quick enough to see the bullet fatally pierce through her ribs and lodge its way into her heart. Her blood ran from her side, staining the floor and draining her of any color. That was the last time he ever saw Sasha. This body in front of him is only a pale imitation of everything Sasha once was. 

He watches as dirt is poured onto the wooden casket, black on black. His friends wail and Sasha’s family members - her parents and her adopted siblings - try to rush towards the casket but are held back by other attendees. Only Connie is quiet, unaffected, a silent observer. Even after the burial is over and the procession has dispersed, Connie remains at Sasha’s grave. He stays there long after the sun has gone down and night has fallen. He would have stayed longer if Jean hadn’t dragged him away. 

Jean takes him to the feast being held at the castle tonight. It’s supposed to celebrate Paradis’ recent victory, but Connie finds it insensitive considering everything that has happened. If he weren’t friends with Historia, he would have skipped the dinner entirely. It would have been more appropriate to hold this dinner at a different time - any day that wasn’t today, really - but he doesn’t know Historia’s schedule. Maybe she has other things on her calendar. 

By the time Connie arrives, soldiers and noblemen are already on their second plate. He takes a seat beside Armin while Jean goes to fix him a plate of dinner - a slab of roast pork, hearty soup with rich beef broth and chunks of carrots and potatoes, leafy green salad decorated with cherry red tomatoes and sweet onions and finished with a creamy sauce, and the heel of a golden baguette with a soft, white crumb. A week ago, the sight of such rich food would have made Connie salivate. Seeing it now makes Connie’s stomach churn and he can’t imagine eating even the smallest bite. Everyone around him seems to have no trouble eating, scarfing it down as if it’s their last meal. It disgusts him. 

He picks up his fork and idly pushes his food around his plate, ignoring the chatter of the people beside him. The more he plays with his food, the less it looks like food. The beef begins to look like the lettuce begins to look like the bread begins to look like the soup and they all begin to look like a shapeless mass on his plate. Connie’s stomach growls, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten anything in almost a week, but he doesn’t feel hungry at all. 

Connie looks up when a finger taps on the rim of his plate. It’s Mikasa, her expression making it hard for Connie to tell if she’s mad at him or concerned. He thinks she’s about to say something, but she simply gestures for him to eat. Doesn’t she know that if he could eat, he would have done so by now? 

He looks down at his plate again, this time trying to decide which item he’ll be most likely to stomach without too much trouble. Connie decides that the bread is the most inoffensive, and he breaks off a piece of it. He can tell it’s fresh by how cleanly he can break it off and how warm it feels in his hand. He can’t remember the last time he’s had such freshly made bread, but he can’t find it in himself to be excited. Instead, he bites into it tentatively, expecting it to be tasteless just like all of the food before, but the taste on his tongue is so much worse. 

For a moment, it’s as if Connie has regained his senses if only for a moment. When the bread touches his tongue, he tastes the buttery crust and the light airy wheat of the crumb. He bites down, expecting the flavors to intensify and remind him that he once enjoyed eating. The bread crumbles on his tongue, turning to ash and leaving a bitter taste on his tongue. In his surprise, he swallows it down, but it burns as it goes down his throat. Connie clutches at his throat with one hand and grabs for a glass of water with the other. Hurriedly, he tips the glass towards his lips, not caring that water is running down his chin and onto his clothes. The glass falls from his hands and onto the floor, shattering. 

Connie bolts from the table and runs into the bathroom, his throat searing with pain. He kneels in front of the toilet. He clutches at his stomach, which demands for more food despite how badly the rest of Connie’s body rejects it. He tries to swallow - once, twice - in a useless attempt to keep the food down. The bile builds in his throat, bitter and vile, until he can no longer help it. Connie leans forward, retching. He’s hardly eaten anything, but his body still heaves violently even though all he has left to give up is air. 

The bitter taste is still left in his mouth even after he’s done, and Connie collapses on the ground against the cool tile of the bathroom floor. His stomach roars at him, demanding more food. Connie lets it rumble, knowing that any attempt at satiating it is futile. 

As Connie stares at the flickering lights on the ceiling, he becomes aware of the darkness that is swallowing up the room. It starts in the back corner, blending in so well with the black and white lens that Connie has grown accustomed to that he almost doesn’t notice. It’s only when it covers the entire wall that Connie begins to really pay attention. His eyes follow it as it slowly slides down the other walls and spills onto the floor, creeping up towards him. Even when he blinks, it doesn’t go away. By the time it reaches him, Connie has accepted the growing void. He watches as it eats away at him, ravenous like the feeling in his stomach. Slowly he disappears, his hands and feet go first followed by his arms and legs. The black slinks up his torso, up his belly and traveling up his chest. As he disappears, Connie finds that the gnawing sensation at the bottom of his stomach also disappears. The void slides up his neck, and gone is the memory of tonight’s dinner burning down Connie’s throat. It’s a relief, Connie finds, not feeling these things. It’s a relief not feeling anything at all, so he lays there in silence, his eyes closed as he lets the darkness consume him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Note #1: The year will be 2050 and I will still be crying over Sasha. I think I write/have written a lot about Sasha but she seems to be a character with a lot of impact on the other characters. It's been a while, but I still miss her a lot. I have probably written a lot of stories about how Sasha's death has affected the other characters so I was surprised that I hadn't written anything like this yet~ 
> 
> Note #2: I got this idea after thinking of those fairytales about eating fairy food and how human food tastes like ashes after you eat it. I was going to weave a lot more of that into this story but decided against it when I started thinking about it more ^^ 
> 
> Note #3: I usually don't like my titles. They're so hard to come up with and I'm even worse with chapter titles. I'm so relieved when I can just name the chapters 1, 2, 3, etc. or if I find a series title and just have a similar naming pattern for the rest of the titles. I really like this one although it took a bit of work to find it ^^
> 
> Note #4: Thanks for reading! I hope you guys liked it :) I hope everyone is doing well~ The weather is fluctuating a lot which has been kind of weird although not out of the ordinary where I live. They are slowly lifting the shelter in place here too which is a bit worrisome because I think it's a bit too early but at least they're not opening everything all at once? Stay safe everyone!!!


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